With help from Elizabeth Titus, Tony Romm, Jessica Meyers and Steve Friess

WYDEN: STILL TALKING ON CFAA UPDATE -- The Oregon lawmaker says he’s still working with a bipartisan group of colleagues to look at ways to update the hacking law under which Aaron Swartz was charged. Wyden’s been considering, as has Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a potential modernization of the statute, which he says hasn’t kept up with the times. The question, though, is how comprehensive the proposed change will be: Some tech groups, for example, are pushing for a more robust change than lawmakers originally suggested in the wake of Swartz’s death. “I want to have a chance to talk to Senators and House members about this because that’s always the question: What is doable?” Wyden tells MT. “This is a moment when the Congress and the country will pay attention and I think we want to look at all the possibilities.”

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SIREN: CHINESE HACKERS GO AFTER NYT — Malefactors in China have been attacking the newspaper’s computer infrastructure over the last four months, according to a Times’ bombshell published late Wednesday: “The timing of the attacks coincided with the reporting for a Times investigation, published online on Oct. 25, that found that the relatives of Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, had accumulated a fortune worth several billion dollars through business dealings. Security experts hired by The Times to detect and block the computer attacks gathered digital evidence that Chinese hackers, using methods that some consultants have associated with the Chinese military in the past, breached The Times’s network.” Much more — including how the hackers gained access to the personal computers of 53 NYT staffers — on this morning’s front page: http://nyti.ms/11iDEHQ

HAGEL HITS SASC: WHAT TECH SHOULD WATCH -- Chuck Hagel faces an ever-critical Senate Armed Services Committee today for what's sure to be a fiery hearing focused on his past statements and policy positions. Tech isn't the mainstage, but it doesn't mean there isn't plenty for the industry to watch: Cyber is the big deal, and intellectual-property protection also could arise during the grilling.

For now, Hagel's given some indication as to his views on both matters. His written replies to committee questions — leaked Wednesday before the hearing — reflect he believes in expanding U.S. Cyber Command but is withholding judgment on whether it should become its own unified command. (More here, from Tony Romm: http://politico.pro/WyJgyT). Asked about China's "aggressive theft of U.S. intellectual property," Hagel said generally that IP infringement and theft of "other sensitive information threatens the United States’ military advantage and economic prosperity." He declined to say how specifically he'd fix it, but pledged to be in tune to the issue. Hagel also affirmed his support for the president's increases in DOD science and tech funding, and at one point, responded to a question on talent acquisition by touting the need for high-skilled immigration reform. (h/t The Atlantic, which appeared to snag the first copy: http://bit.ly/Vw3B9P)

GOOD THURSDAY MORNING and welcome to Morning Tech, where we’d probably pick Bradley Cooper to play us in a movie. There’s no guarantee, though, that we could pull off a split-screen quite like the one with Steve Jobs that Ashton Kutcher tweeted Thursday [ http://bit.ly/14ssBiA]. Tell us how you’d cast other tech titans, in an email or tweet to abyers@politico.com, @ byersalex and @ POLITICOPro. Catch the rest of the team’s contact info after speed read.

FCC TO EASE EXPERIMENTAL RULES FOR WIRELESS — The agency has been giving out experimental licenses for some time, but the process has been unwieldy. That’s likely to change at today’s meeting, Brooks Boliek reports: “The commission’s expected vote at a meeting Thursday will allow scientists and engineers at universities and other research institutions to get a single blanket license for their experiments that will allow them to tinker with conditions such as power levels and frequencies without having to get permission from the FCC for each change.” More, for Pros: http://politico.pro/X9OvBa

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ROGERS TO TALK CLOUD, CYBER AT EVENT TODAY -- The International Association of Chief of Police team up with SafeGov.org to host a day-long symposium today at the Newseum on "Leveraging the Cloud for Law Enforcement," and the keynote this afternoon is from House Intel panel chief Mike Rogers. The gist of today's talk, per a spokeswoman: “Chairman Rogers will discuss the opportunities and challenges with cloud computing for law enforcement and the government at large. He believes that it is critical to get this issue right given how much is at stake. He’ll also touch on the importance of government collaboration with industry to solve complex issues such as cyber security and cloud computing.” We'll be there.

USABILITY BACK ON THE DOCKET FOR NTIA MEETING — The multi-stakeholder group meets again this afternoon, where they’ll revive the debate over how to best present app privacy policies to consumers. User-experience testing is likely to grow out of the discussion over whether to use icons or text to convey how an app uses data, as the group already has one testing proposal in hand and is looking to score a couple more. Says Innovators Network’s Mark Blafkin, who’s taken the lead on the usability issue: “For the longest time as a community our approach to privacy has been to get more and more lawyers in the room, which isn’t necessarily the way to communicate to the individual consumers. One of the issues we’re running into now, is we need to figure out not just what is the minimum amount of information we need to communicate to consumers, but also what is maximum amount of information they are capable of taking in in the context of a transaction.” Catch the meeting agenda here: http://1.usa.gov/118SZQW

FOR YOUR RADAR: SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE ORGANIZES — The panel is already on the board in 2013 after its high-profile gun control hearing Wednesday, but the committee convenes again at 10 a.m. this morning to officially kick off the new session of Congress. On the business meeting agenda: subcommittees, which aren't yet formally set in stone. Tech is watching the antitrust panel, in particular, as it's widely expected Sen. Amy Klobuchar will snag the gavel given that its previous leader, Herb Kohl, has retired from Congress. We'll be tracking — but, if you missed it, Tony had a recap on what Klobuchar would bring to the gig: http://politico.pro/VMmqE4

FACEBOOK’S MOBILE MOVEMENT — Fresh off a $1.5 billion fourth quarter, the social network says building and refining the on-the-go experience for advertisers and users is a key component of its 2013 plans, Bobby Cervantes reports: “Mobile ads made up 23 percent of the company’s total ad revenue by the end of the fourth quarter, excluding Instagram. That’s up from 14 percent from 2012’s third quarter. [Mark] Zuckerberg said he expects continued growth in that area.” More, for Pros, is here: http://politico.pro/11iA809 and don’t miss this handy timeline via the AP of Facebook’s developments as a public company: http://bit.ly/11iH4uj

GOOD HACKING, BAD HACKING -- Internet activists, recently feeling a surge of momentum, are facing the effects of more nefarious political tech activities like Anonymous' DOJ sentencing site takeover last weekend, Jessica Meyers reports. The actions, for example, reinforce the stereotype of online rights groups as promoters of "wild craziness,” says Public Knowledge’s Gigi Sohn. The issue touches at the soul of activism, Jessica writes: how to advocate a cause without severing its credibility. More: http://politi.co/XUoA12

ANTIGUA KEEPS FIGHTING BACK — Antigua Finance Minister Harold Lovell issued a statement Wednesday saying he was “shocked and saddened that in this trade dispute case, the United States has chosen to resort to such intemperate and unfortunate language." The U.S. Trade Representative's office on Monday said it could block foreign direct investment in Antigua, should the island nation follow through with its threat to sell American movies, music and software online on the cheap without paying copyright royalties. The WTO has given Antigua the green light to do so as punishment for the U.S. violating agreements in expelling Antigua's Internet casinos and prosecuting its operators. "It appears the United States is threatening our country with unspecified retaliation for simply following the rules and regulations provided for by the very WTO agreements that the United States in large part devised and certainly endorsed during the development of the WTO almost 20 years ago,” Lovell said. He added the U.S. has a "dismissive and frequently condescending attitude towards Antigua and that the USTR claim that Antigua had rejected "reasonable settlement offers" are, "as the USTR clearly knows, simply untrue."

ALSO HAPPENING TODAY — Begich puts Alaskan library broadband program to use: The Alaskan senator will video chat with kids from some of the most remote communities in the state — many of whom wouldn’t have access to broadband Internet without the state’s Online With Libraries program, secured as part of the 2009 stimulus bill... FTC Commish globe trots: FTC Commissioner Edith Ramirez heads to Jakarta today where she'll participate in an APEC meeting involving data privacy and electronic commerce. She’s the second agency leader speaking publicly while on the go this week, as Julie Brill -- fresh off a privacy-based trip to Brussels last week — made an appearance at a Skadden event Monday in Calif. where she dug in to tech-related antitrust issues. ... Microsoft hosts STEM event: Panelists from local and national education groups will convene at the Windows-maker’s D.C. headquarters at 8:30 this morning to talk about best practices for strengthening the pipeline of STEM-educated U.S. graduates.

SPEED READ:

RIM REBRANDS, LOOKS FOR COMEBACK: But the company disappointed investors over the March introduction of BlackBerry 10 in the U.S., Reuters reports: http://reut.rs/YkCXxI

DID MEGA JUST BECOME MEGAUPLOAD? A new crowd-sourced search engine has effectively made the cyber-locker into a piracy site, Wired reports: http://bit.ly/YkD3W9

BLACK EYE FOR SYMANTEC IN NYT HACK: Of 45 pieces of malware, only one was caught by the anti-virus software, Forbes highlights: http://onforb.es/YkDmjS

FACEBOOK BEATS EXPECTATIONS, BUT STOCK SLIDES — It made a lot in Q4, but it spent a lot too — and that keeps Wall Street cautious, the New York Times reports: http://nyti.ms/YkEhka

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Authors:

About The Author

Alex Byers is a technology reporter for POLITICO Pro. He was previously a senior Web producer at POLITICO, where he helped run POLITICO's Twitter and Facebook accounts. Before joining the Web team, he graduated from The George Washington University, where he served as the 2009-10 editor-in-chief of The GW Hatchet, the school's award-winning student newspaper.

Previously, he has interned at washingtonpost.com, Dateline NBC and General Mills Inc. He hails from Minneapolis and is an avid Twins fan, musician and golfer.